Snow knit together, purled and planed with frost, to make her sinuous body; vales and dells of crisply-iced leaf created her pudenda, holly berries her bright nipples. Mistletoe twined and twirled, catching the warm colours of sunset, making tresses of gold and white, faint green and the tiniest rumour of pink; they touched the blushing dip of spine near swelling buttocks as glorious life poured into her, making her, briefly, far more than the sum of her parts.

Snow-woman, Goddess, a being of Winter, ready to join body and forces with the Holly King – born, in her strange cold perfection, to birth the rising Sun, to betoken the lengthening days and the hope of Spring.

He heard her through the rustling of forest animals, saw her shadow etched in the fall of light through russet death of leaves, smelled her tinny essence as it blossomed into salty human groynes…